


everybody needs a confidante for all that wreckage left inside

by elainebarrish



Category: House of Cards (US TV)
Genre: F/F, OT3, Polyamory, Prompt Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-14
Updated: 2017-08-14
Packaged: 2018-12-15 03:16:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,126
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11797290
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elainebarrish/pseuds/elainebarrish
Summary: the bunker gets another visit from the three of them. the time stretches before them, and claire feels the strain of the last few years, feels it the strongest in these quiet, unfamiliar moments.





	everybody needs a confidante for all that wreckage left inside

**Author's Note:**

> OK SO thank u sm 2 acascavel on tumblr who sent me a bunch of prompts + let me choose ! I went w the poly one bc I've really been feelin that recently, but honestly this has huge amounts of creative liberties taken on the prompt bc sometimes the characters won't do what you want them to lmao. I really hope you like this and thank you so much for sending me the prompt !!! I'm at celestewhite.tumblr.com so if anyone else feels like prompting anything please go ahead !!

Back into the bunker they all go, carrying documents and laptops and lanyards and Claire wonders when this will end, when the country will finally be able to stop being on alert. Cathy is back, hasn’t explained what happened, hasn’t questioned her continued place as Secretary of State, and Jane somehow makes her way down to the bunker with her, and Claire remembers last time this had happened, last time the three of them had been in this very same bunker. This time there’s some of her security team and not many other people, because Cathy had been her very last meeting, had been there just to review a few things for tomorrow, had been packing up her things when the secret service guys had swept into the room, muttering things into their cuffs, had lead them downstairs without explaining what was happening, and when Claire asks the head of her security team he practically shrugs.

 

They sit down around the table, and Claire considers getting on the phone but there’s no one she wants to call, no one that needs her to check in to see if they’re safe, and Cathy and Jane simply look at her, then at each other, then at the table, as though they’re expecting something to happen, as though she should know what to suggest that they should do. The simple answer to that, of course, is just to wait until the secret service decide that they should let them out, and that’s all.

 

“Coffee, anyone?” Jane offers, after a long, drawn-out moment, and Claire looks up from pretending to check her phone, nodding. Cathy nods too, and Jane disappears.

 

“How many of those sachets do you think she has in her bag?” Claire asks, with what she thinks is a warm, secretive smile, but Cathy doesn’t warm to her, hasn’t since she came back from the hospital, regardless of how many bouquets of flowers Claire sent her.

 

“She’s always carrying at least five,” she says, but it’s short, and she doesn’t smile back, looks down at her crossed arms instead.

 

Claire looks at her for a long moment, ponders what she should do, wonders whether she should ask, should ask what she’s done, but then she supposes that they won’t be in here long, that she won’t need to.

 

Jane comes back, three coffees balanced precariously in her hands, and takes her seat next to Cathy again, and Claire struggles not to think of this as them against her, as them teaming up to face her down.

 

“White, two sugars for Cathy, black for Claire,” Jane rattles off, passing them out, and Claire thanks her softly, tries to give her something of a smile, tries to remember that Jane is on her side, tries to pretend like she doesn’t know that the two of them share a past, somehow, somewhere, in the long drawn out game of their political careers.

 

It’s quiet, for what feels like a long time, Claire still replying to emails and ignoring the soft murmurs of the two of them, ignoring the moments when Jane laughs, raspy and low and still quiet, and she thinks for a moment that maybe she should retire to one of the other rooms, get her head down while she’s trapped, unable to do anything. Take this as the break that she probably needs, that the dark circles that she covers every morning are telling her she needs, but then she thinks that if they get any information she needs to be here, needs to be awake to tackle it. The head of her security team slides in, whispers something in her ear, and she sighs, and tries to pretend like Cathy and Jane aren’t already looking at her, like they don’t know that he’s probably brought some kind of update.

 

“We’re stuck until the morning,” she says, eventually, subconsciously going to slide the ring that she used to wear around her finger, the one that she doesn’t put on the mornings anymore, that still sits in it’s dish next to her bed.

 

“Did he say what the threat is?” Jane asks, calmly, but she sees her hands, sees the way they’re clenched around the edge of the table.

 

“No, they’re not positive what it could be, yet.” She concentrates on taking her glasses off, folding the arms carefully, setting them down slightly above her stack of folders, the one that she somehow never manages to work all the way through, doesn’t look for their reactions, doesn’t want to see the look on Jane’s face, because it matters to her, because both of their reactions matter to her.

 

“So what are we supposed to do?” Cathy asks, a biting edge behind her words, and Claire knows that it’s not pointed at her, not all of it, anyway.

 

“I suppose we should just get some sleep, we’ll get woken up by any news,” she folds her arms in front of her, loosely upon the table, and hopes that her body language is not the kind of defensive that part of her feels, like part of her is taking their disappointment to be aimed at her. “We can’t do anything more to help the situation until we know, precisely, what the situation is.”

 

Cathy looks at Jane, and Jane looks at her phone, sitting back with a sigh that sounds defeated, and Claire thinks of the last time, when Jane had seemed erratic and stressed but she had learned to think of that as part of her character, but the frown lines on her forehead, the strain around her mouth, those are things that she has not gotten used to, are not just parts of her character like her surprising turns of phrase and seemingly unrelated topics of conversation had proven to be.

 

“There isn’t anything on the news, not even on Twitter,” she says, as though Twitter might have had an answer to something that even the President didn’t know, and Claire supposes that she’s right, that in this day and age Twitter had somehow proven to be a way to break news, that social media now moved so fast that the White House could barely keep up.

 

“So we’re just stuck here until they decide we’re safe?” Cathy asks, and Claire almost winces at the annoyance in her voice, almost goes on the defensive, and she can’t help the way that her hackles rise, the way that she’s been feeling ever since Cathy went cold on her, since the convention, since whatever happened while she was away.

 

“Looks that way,” she says, simply, looking down at the folders on the desk, thinking about what would happen if she called someone, demanded they be released. She could maybe swing it for the others, but she’s stuck here until her security team decides, because even if the country hates her on some days she’s still the most important person in this goddamn country, she still bends to the whims of her team trying to stop any attempt on her life, any attempt on the safety of the White House.

 

Jane looks at her, and it’s different from the way that she looks at Cathy but that’s just because it’s sharper, because of the expectation in it, because she believes in Claire in a way that she does not believe in Cathy, regardless of whether they’re old friends or not. Cathy was not her pick, not for VP or for president, and Claire wonders if Cathy notices that you can see that in her gaze, regardless of how Jane softens sometimes around her, regardless of the way that their eye contact has a long history hidden within it. Under the harsh glare of the fluorescents this is somehow more obvious, like how the tension she holds around her eyes is more obvious, and Claire wants to help her, somehow, because these are the only two people she’s got left, and half the time she doesn’t even know if she’s got them.

 

“Sleep’s out,” she says, eventually, suddenly, sipping her coffee, and somehow keeping her composure, because it doesn’t matter that they’re the only three people here (not including some security), she’s not losing it in front of them, doesn’t lose it in front of people, even while her brain is screaming at her about the earth above them, about the crushing weight of the building that rests on top of them. Claire looks at her, politely inquiring, and Jane absently wonders if any of her expressions aren’t polite, if she’ll ever get to see her fall apart. “Not while we’re down here,” she shrugs, and it’s jerky, short. Cathy puts a hand on her arm, and frowns, and Claire thinks that she already knew, that she already knew about Jane’s discomfort underground, that it had been evident the last time and she just hadn’t known what it was.

 

“This may seem as though it’s not helpful, but you should still try,” she says, slowly, measuring her words. “Seeing as we can’t get anything done while down here, anyway, apart from check on Twitter and watch out for anything breaking that may explain what’s going on.”

 

Jane sighs, rolls her shoulders, and Claire absently thinks that that’s not a nervous tic she’s seen from her before, that this makes her more nervous than messing with the, frankly, murderous former president. “We’re too old for all nighters, I suppose,” she says, and Claire can tell that she wants to smooth her hair, or drum her fingers on the desk, or lock her hands together, and that she resists, because something is still telling her to perform, because she’s rolled up tight.

 

“I don’t suppose your kitchen staff got thrown in here too?” Cathy asks, not smiling, but she thinks there might be an almost.

 

“Not quite,” Claire smiles. “But I happen to have it on good authority that the kitchen is well stocked.”

 

Cathy nods, and somehow the three of them end up milling around the kitchen, somehow Cathy ends up serving some actually surprisingly good spaghetti, and she doesn’t meet Claire’s eyes as they eat, even as she tells her that it’s good, and she thinks that maybe she resents the surprise within her voice, on her face, or if she’s still paying for whatever it is that Cathy thinks she’s done, whatever it is that happened (she thinks Frank is probably responsible, that he really didn’t tell her everything towards the end, that where they really fell apart was when he started keeping things from her).

 

They disappear into that one room with the bunks, the one where Jane had phoned someone quietly, secretly, the last time, and Claire continues to feel on the outside, as she slips off her shoes and sits at the long table, as she thinks about how much her feet hurt, and she opens her plain folder, works through the things that she usually would have tackled upstairs, before she went to bed. Midnight rolls around, and Jane pads into the room, wearing some pyjamas she must have found, and they’re slightly too big, a uniform pale blue, the shirt buttoned in a way that looks lazy, a way that makes them part at the throat, and Claire can’t help the way that her goes to that small amount of skin, no more than she shows in the office, but is somehow more distracting when her hair is rumpled and her socked toes are digging into the carpet.

 

“Couldn’t sleep?” she offers, quietly, and Jane shakes her head.

 

“No. The air’s recycled, right?” Claire nods, and she hums quietly. “I thought so, you can tell. It’s too dry,” she pauses, looks at Claire, really  _ looks _ at her, as though that’s somehow different. “Cathy won’t tell me what happened, but I feel as though you don’t know either.”

 

“I’m assuming it has something to do with Frank,” she says, shortly, quietly, and Jane nods.

 

“Most things do. Most bad things do, anyway.” She sits down, opposite her, and Claire almost wants her to rub her eyes and yawn, because she looks soft, looks tired and sleepy and slightly aggrieved, in a way that she hates to think is cute, reminds her of too many men who have told her and other women that they’re cute when they’re angry, like their anger and their emotions don’t matter, are mitigated by this one man thinking that they’re cute within this moment.

 

“Do you think he had something to do with her “accident”?” She asks, bluntly, and Claire almost laughs, because she’s sure he did, because that would explain so much, because she wouldn’t put it past him, wouldn’t put anything past him, anymore.

 

“It wouldn’t surprise me,” she says, diplomatically, and Jane laughs, like she had just said yes, because Jane knows that that’s what she means.

 

“You should tell her, that you didn’t know, that you had nothing to do with it,” she suggests, softly, the smile dropped from her face.

 

“I know,” Claire pauses, and it seems like she’s going to go on, but she just stops, just leaves it at that, because now is not the time to express any worries that Cathy wouldn’t believe her, that what stops her is actually how much she does respect her, how much she does, honestly, like her.

 

“As far as Cathy knows the two of you share everything, as far as anyone knows that’s still true, even with him in hiding and the FBI not looking for him as hard as they could be.”

 

“I know that,” she sighs, scrubbing her brow in a rare display of tiredness. “I just don't know how to broach it with her,” she admits. “If I start with telling her I know that something is wrong, that I know something happened, that makes it sound as though I know something about it, like maybe I'm complicit.”

 

“You need to start somewhere,” Jane shrugs, still looking at her, gaze sharp, as though for weaknesses and Claire realises that she maybe doesn't know whether or not Claire was complicit, that she’s trying to find out, but Claire also thinks that she wouldn't necessarily damn her for that, would somehow view it as “well, that's just politics”. “What do you think happened?”

 

“I have no idea,” she says, honestly, more honestly than she maybe intended. “I wish it hadn't, whatever it was that Frank did, whether he did it himself or forced someone else to.”

 

“Me too, it would have made the transition period far easier than it was without her,” Jane says, somehow grimly, and Claire wonders if she realises how impersonal that sounds, considering the “history” that hangs in the air between the two of them.

 

“I couldn't help but notice,” Claire starts diplomatically, and Jane’s eyebrow raises but she doesn't stop her, lets her ask. “That you two have history. How far back do you go?”

 

“A long way,” Jane admits. “We were both new to DC when we met, she wasn't married yet, I was practically still an intern,” she shrugs, and the tension around her mouth is gone, returned by something that looks like a choked back smile, something that looks positive but reined in. “We helped each other out, back then, would still help each other out, but I warned her, when Frank got passed over for Secretary of State, to watch out for him.”

 

“You’ve had your eye on him for that long?” she asks, softly, impressed.

 

“The ones who want power, whatever they have to do to get it? They’re easy to sniff out.”

 

“Did you sniff me out, at the same time?” Claire can’t help herself, can’t help but wonder if the stink of the power hungry lingers upon her, because she knows that it does.

 

“Of course. But I never quite expected you to apply yourself quite as well as you have,” Jane says, and somehow that’s admiring, and Claire enjoys that, is comforted by the idea that Jane sees her for what she is, for what she has become, appreciates that, and part of Claire’s brain can’t help but mutter that there’s a future for them, somewhere, within the Oval and within her personal life too. She just shrugs, modest, smiling, and Cathy appears in the doorway, and Claire wonders how long she was there for, wonders how much she heard.

 

“Evening,” she says, and she’s not wearing pyjamas, but her shirt is untucked, as though she’d just gotten dressed again, and Claire notes that she hasn’t put her shoes back on, that she’s wearing plain black socks, that she looks as tired as Claire feels.

 

“Cathy,” she starts, and she wonders if in front of Jane is the time, if they should have this conversation now, and she realises that, oddly, she trusts her, trusts someone that she’s only known for less than a year. “I just wanted to ask what happened, why you’ve been cold with me?” She tries to put aside the ways that she usually talks to her, tries to leave aside the falseness and the fakeness and the tricks of the trade that she’s learnt over the last thirty years.

 

“I heard y’all talking about it,” she says, and her eyes are still narrowed, she’s still wary as she sits down, resting her hands carefully upon the oversized table. “Are you sure you didn’t know anything about it?”

 

“I didn’t, I promise,” she says, and she thinks about how, for what feels like one of the first times in a long time, she can promise someone something and truly mean it.

 

“Frank pushed me down a flight of stairs, Claire,” Cathy says, flatly, simply, and Claire doesn’t stop herself when she leans across and covers her hand with her own, noticing the way that Jane rubs her shoulder, and Claire feels a faint thought, a thought that seems to be something along of the lines of having missed this, human contact, since she became the president and everyone started leaving a wide circle of uncrossable space around her, since she executed the one person that would touch her without reservation.

 

“He  _ pushed _ you?” She can’t help the anger that wobbles within her voice, can’t help the horror that she feels almost like a touch, almost like a hurt. She’s surprised that she still experiences these things, surprised that Frank can still horrify and shock her, after all he’s done. Cathy nods, mute, and Claire tightens her grip on her hand, and Cathy surprises her when she turns hers over under hers, surprises her when she loosely links her fingers, is surprised by how much she’s gladdened by this touch. “I’m so sorry,” it feels so lame, whispered into this room with its recycled air and the weight of the White House pressing down upon them.

 

“So long as he doesn't get pardoned,” Cathy shrugs, and her smile turns a kind of brutal, savage, that Claire doesn't think she's seen before, and she knows that the power plays have got to her, and she's glad, glad that she can start thinking like a political player, glad that she's now looking out for herself before anyone else. “I’ve won.”

 

“I’ll make sure he doesn't.” Claire’s voice is strong, none of the vacillating between options that had been there before. “I'm going to divorce him, whenever they find him,” she announces, and it's the first time she’s voiced that thought but she realises it's true, that she's going to, that she’s done. They didn't keep things from each other, and the versions of them that do are not the ones that got married, are not the people that they were. This was no longer the partnership that she had signed up for, hadn't been for longer than she had realised.

 

“I’ll hold you to that,” Cathy says, and the savagery remains, and when Claire looks to Jane she looks oddly proud of her, oddly pleased. Claire is struck by the thought that she wants to kiss Cathy’s savage smile, struck by how that seems to come out of nowhere, and then she thinks back to the night of the dinner with Petrov, of beer pong and trying to convince her to stay later. She realises that it had been on her mind then, too, and she barely notes her grip on Cathy tightening, barely notes the way that Jane looks at her, as though her thoughts are displayed across her face, and she thinks that she's tired enough that they could be.

 

“Once he's completely out of the way, the real work can start,” Jane says, and Claire can't help the way her subconscious says that the real work is the three of them in the White House, the three of them working late and heading up to bed together, the three of them in the White House kitchen, and it's not domestic it just feels like it should be a fact of her life now. Her life is these two women and the country that she married all of those years ago, because even as Frank betrays her she won't betray America, won't betray the power it gives her. 

 

“You can finally be VP, if you still want it,” Claire says, because she knows she can make the current VP disappear, that he's just some random libertarian centrist that has had a mostly unremarkable political career.

 

“I think I'll just wait for your eight years to be up and then try for the presidency,” she laughs, and Claire’s smile matches Jane’s, because they both want it, both want to keep the presidency within this circle of people. Plus, Cathy deserves it, deserves to no longer be someone who gets bowled out of the way by Frank Underwood, deserves to get to make her own plans, indulge in her own machinations.

 

“You’ll have my vote,” Claire says, and then pauses at how rote that sounds, how trite. “I would support your bid in any way that I could. Unless of course I'm public enemy number one by then.”

 

Jane laughs, shrugs. “So long as you don't pardon him you should make your way into the American people’s good books, even if you are a Democrat.”

 

Claire finally lets go of Cathy’s hand, leans back in her chair, and tries to let her mask fall, tries to relax, to remember how to slump her shoulders. She wonders how long it's been, if she’d relaxed within the White House yet, if somewhere within her eight years it would start to feel like hers, because it hasn't yet, hasn't become home, and sometimes she misses their townhouse, misses smoking out of their window, misses when they were smaller fish in a bigger pond.

 

“We really should get some sleep now,” Cathy announces, after checking her watch, and Claire sees that somehow it's 1am, somehow it's even later than she usually lets herself remain awake with her paperwork. That knowledge settles on her heavily, and she feels like she's crawling through treacle as she picks up her shoes, follows the other two to their bunks. She finds the pyjamas, the supply of nightwear that's still in its plastic wrapping, and she changes slowly and methodically, and when she looks up she doesn't miss Jane looking at her, and she meets her eyes, and she thinks for a moment that she might be tired enough to crawl into her bunk, might be tired enough to kiss her while Cathy watches. She thinks about what it would feel like to fall asleep bracketed by them both, squished into a single, Cathy almost falling off the edge. She hovers in the middle of the room, Cathy still stood to one side, and she meets Jane’s eyes and Jane holds out the duvet, holds it open for her, and she tells her brain to be quiet as she slides in next to her.

  
She's not thinking as she shuffles close to Jane, as she leaves enough space, almost, for Cathy to maneuver herself onto the edge, and they're laughing, tiredly, as they all try to fit. Cathy and Jane kiss across and above her, and even that is slow, as though this moment is as tired as Claire’s brain is, or maybe it's just the unreality, the surprise, maybe she's just processing it slowly, as they draw apart and she turns towards Jane, her face tilted towards her like a flower towards the sun, like she needs this or she’ll die, and Jane kisses her softly, slowly, one hand cupping her jaw, Cathy seizing her hand once again, and Claire feels herself pulled apart and put back together by the two of them, feels herself being renewed as she drowns beneath them.


End file.
